Understanding and responding to needs: What might this look like?
Examples of what this might involve:
1.
Multidisciplinary case meeting, consultant-to-consultant, nurse-to-nurse or key-worker-to-key-worker communication, or joint assessment or joint working involving mental health and substance use services.
2.
- Clarity around when assessments are to take place e.g. on entering service, crisis presentations, or ongoing assessment.
- Inclusion of families in care and support planning and decision making.
- Inquiry into and identification of non-clinical outcome goals for individuals as part of screening and assessment processes.
3.
- Clear communication and sharing as appropriate of outcome of assessment and next steps and who is responsible. This should include how assessor has defined and interpreted 'mental health' and 'substance use' (ie acknowledgement of, for example, experience of complex trauma that has resulted in psychological need that does not meet the threshold of a severe and enduring mental health condition or is diagnostically overshadowed by substance use).
- Anticipatory care planning acknowledging the fluctuating needs of someone on a recovery journey.